🚢CSX Freight Train Transports Nuclear Reactor from NS Savannah Ship

1 year ago
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Special freight train CSX S981 transports the nuclear reactor that came out of the decommissioned ship NS Savannah, which sits in the Baltimore Harbor near Canton Railroad. Union Pacific will pick it up in Illinois and transport it to a nuclear waste facility. The typical CSX night time move, (poorly) recorded on the Old Main Line in the Point of Rocks MARC station, in Maryland. Locomotive: CSX 7774(GE C40-8W, built 1992). 11 22 22 © BaltimoreAndOhioRR ™. Some information about the ship from Wikipedia - "NS Savannah was the first nuclear-powered merchant ship. She was built in the late 1950s at a cost of $46.9 million (including a $28.3 million nuclear reactor and fuel core) and launched on July 21, 1959. She was funded by United States government agencies. Savannah was a demonstration project for the potential use of nuclear energy. The ship was named after SS Savannah, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic ocean. She was in service between 1962 and 1972 as one of only four nuclear-powered cargo ships ever built. (The Soviet ice-breaker Lenin, launched on December 5, 1957, was the first nuclear-powered civil ship.)
"Savannah was deactivated in 1971 and after several moves has been moored at Pier 13 of the Canton Marine Terminal in Baltimore, Maryland, since 2008.
"Savannah's reactor was designed to civilian standards using low-enriched uranium with less emphasis on shock resistance and compactness of design than that seen in comparable military propulsion reactors, but with considerable emphasis on safety and reliability.
"The reactor was placed to allow for access from above for refueling. The 74 MW reactor is a tall, narrow cylinder, housed in a cylindrical containment vessel with rounded ends and a 14-foot-diameter (4.3 m) vertical cylindrical projection housing the control rods and refueling equipment. The 50-foot-long (15 m) containment vessel houses the pressurized-water reactor, the primary coolant loop and the steam generator.
"Built in 1955 by New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Camden, New Jersey, United States."

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